September 2025
Seven years ago, I witnessed a crime at the altar of ‘development’—one that continues unchecked today: the deliberate refusal to see that what most of us call “rural development” is, in fact, just urban arrogance dressed as policy.Back then, I was summoned as the token “insider” to a high-powered government meeting —tasked, along with sophisticated sounding consultants from a global funder, to redesign the future a rural development programme. The experts from the multilateral spoke with polished confidence, their PowerPoints shining; the government team, by contrast, shrank into hesitancy,…